Transcendent (27 page)

“You know, you might have a point, Mrs. A,” Heather interrupted, able to stand the bickering no more. “Maybe Cal would be better off without the freaky-cool fish fork and superstrength. Who knows? But you know what? It's not going to matter in a few hours and we'll never know one way or another if we don't use every advantage we have—including Cal—because there will be nobody left to have the argument.”

“She's right,” Roth said. “Next to Fennrys, and probably Mason—and, quite honestly, with what's happened to the two of them, I'm not even sure we can trust what side they'll end up on when this all hits the fan—Cal's the strongest one of all
of us.” He turned to Daria and Douglas. “Whether you meant for him to be that way or not, he is. We're going to need that strength. And while I know it's almost unheard of for such a thing to happen in a Gosforth founding house, maybe you should put aside all the family crap and work toward a common goal. For once. Maybe we all should. Maybe, if we do that, we can actually achieve something worthwhile and stop the world from ending.”

T
he train pulled into Valhalla station and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There was a side rail that was reserved for Gunnar Starling's private use, and that's where Toby guided Sleipner to come to rest. Mason wondered fleetingly if, after they were gone, the fabulous transformed beast wouldn't just vanish into thin air. Or take to the skies. Or
whatever it was that mythical, monstrous horses did in their off-duty hours.

Together, she, Fennrys, Toby, and Rafe crossed the small, mostly empty parking lot. Like the dedicated side rail, there was also a small carport near the quaint little station that was reserved for the black town car that was always there, parked and ready to shuttle Starling family members to and from the estate a few miles away. Normally, Toby would have had a set of car keys—news to Mason but not surprising, considering what she now knew of him—but he hadn't thought to bring them along.

“Not a problem,” Rafe said, stepping past them.

“Right. You've got some kind of magick trick.” Mason nodded.

She assumed that's how a god would normally circumvent locks and keys, and was a bit shocked when, instead, he shattered the driver's-side window with a sharp blow from his elbow, reached in to open the door, and snaked under the dashboard so he could hotwire the ignition in under a minute.

Toby took the wheel and drove with Rafe in the front passenger seat. Mason and Fennrys sat in the dark, plushly upholstered back, both of them silently staring out their respective windows, watching the dark shapes of trees slide past. Mason had never been a party girl in high school. She wasn't much of a drinker and she didn't smoke pot like some of the other kids did, so she really didn't have much of a frame of reference when it came to the idea of intoxication. But that
was really the only way she could describe how she was feeling in that moment. The inside of her skull felt as though there were currents of electricity firing across its surface—tiny spears of lightning forking through her brain and flaring behind her eyes. Her pulse was deep and steady and swift—and louder than she had ever felt—like a hammer pounding on stone. Her skin was ice and fire. A good six inches separated Mason's knee from Fennrys's, but it felt like sparks arced between them.

She knew, just by the way she felt, that she was right about where they were headed. The Valkyrie soul in her knew, and that's why she felt almost drunk with bottled excitement. They were on the right track. She just didn't know if they were doing the right
thing
. The Estate was where Mason would find her mother—she was sure of it—and she knew, beyond any doubt, that was something she
had
to do.

If only to say good-bye before the end.

Ragnarok. The end . . . and a fresh beginning
.

Her father's dearest wish.

Mason wondered then, if her mother
hadn't
died, would her father still have rushed headlong toward the fulfillment of the prophecy? If Yelena hadn't sacrificed herself, for Mason's sake, maybe
she
would have been the thing in Gunnar's life that kept him wanting to live. But she had made her choice thinking it was the right one to make. Now Mason was doing the same thing.

And maybe it's all for nothing, but the choice is mine . . .

She closed her eyes, and felt Fennrys's hand wrap around
hers.

When she looked over at him, she saw that his eyes were gleaming, silvery-blue in the darkness. The Wolf inside him was just as keyed up as the raven inside her. There wasn't any way for them to turn back now.

“We will finish this together,” Fenn whispered, lifting their joined hands between them. “To whatever end . . . we'll get there
together
.”

He wrapped his other hand around hers and she kissed his fingers.

When she turned back to look out the window, it was to see that they were driving through the gates of the Starling family estate. Looming up in front of them, at the end of the long winding drive was the manor house, like a castle that needed storming. Only, Mason knew that the house itself wasn't why she was there. There was nothing in that grand, empty echoing monument to loneliness that she needed. The manor's many darkened windows glared down at her like the hollowed eye sockets of moon-bleached skulls, stacked for offering to a battle god.

She would find nothing there.

That was her father's place.

His study, full of secrets and locked boxes and books, with its cavernous fireplace hearth like a yawning maw, the applewood fire unlit within . . . that was where she could go if she wanted to find
him
. All of the pieces of him. The runegold, the regrets, the words in his diary and the picture of her mother on the mantelpiece that Mason wasn't even sure he looked at
anymore . . .

In her head, there was another picture, suddenly: the image of three women, wild-eyed with wanton looks, lounging draped over the leather furniture in the study, surrounded by all that oak paneling, and Mason knew, with certainty, that the Norns had visited her father in that house. The house that, even with all of the windows open, had
always
felt to Mason like a prison cell. And she wondered for the first time if it was truly the incident in the garden shed, with Rory and the game of hide and seek, that had been solely responsible for her claustrophobia. . . .

“Oh!” she gasped suddenly, and opened the car door, lurching out before Toby had even fully braked to a stop in front of the sweeping stone steps of the house.

“Mase!”

Fennrys dove out of the other side of the still-moving car. She could hear him running up behind her, his boots crunching on the stone walkway, and she turned when she felt his hand on her wrist, but she didn't stop.

“Hey . . . are you okay?” he asked.

“I know!” she said, almost breathless with excitement. “Oh, Fenn—I know where she is!”

“Find me,” her mother had said.

At least, that's what Mason had told Fennrys about her version of the dream-vision. Initially, he'd been skeptical about the possibility, even if he'd kept it to himself. When they'd left Asgard, Fennrys had promised Mason that, when all the
craziness was over, they would go back and look for Yelena—the
real
Yelena—and rescue her from wherever Heimdall had imprisoned her. But truthfully, he'd suspected that might be a hard promise to keep. Because, short of crossing back over Bifrost—which Mason's brother Roth had so very helpfully blown to kingdom come anyway—Fenn hadn't had the foggiest idea how they were going to do that. Not really.

When Mason had puzzled out the message in their shared visions—that they would find the answers they were looking for at her home back in Westchester—he was still skeptical. But with New York City falling to pieces all around them, nowhere to go, and nothing
he'd
managed to figure out to help fix the whole bloody mess, Fenn had been willing to go with her when she'd called Sleipner in the tunnel. Largely because, really, who wouldn't? The sudden appearance of the mythic equine juggernaut, standing there docile as a petting zoo pony and willing to do Mason's bidding, was, in itself, a pretty persuasive argument. And once onboard the train and moving, Fenn had felt the pull of destiny. He felt it now as he ran along behind Mason, leaving Toby and Rafe still clambering out of the car in front of the house.

This estate must be huge
, he thought as they ran, wondering how on earth they would ever find Yelena there.

The manicured grounds around the back of the house—a series of terraced, putting-green-perfect lawns bordered by flower-laden rock gardens—gave way gradually to wilder, less structured landscapes. A waving sweep of wildflower meadow
rolled away to a rocky streambed that twisted through the property and, beyond that, there was actual forest. Not just trees, but
forest
—dark and deep. Mason leaped like a deer down the garden path, flat-out running through the meadow.

Eventually, Fennrys stopped shouting after her, asking where the hell she was going, and saved his breath so he could just run and keep up. The farther away they got from the house, the more apparent it became that the outer grounds of the estate weren't something that Gunnar Starling cared for with the same sort of meticulous attention as the ordered spaces closest to the house. An ornamental rustic footbridge spanning the tumbling stream near the forest had partially collapsed, the middle arch having rotted and fallen into the water.

It's like Bifrost in miniature
, Fenn thought as he leaped from one bank to the other in Mason's wake.

She didn't even pause, just hurdled the stream and kept on running straight into the dense trees soaring up ahead of her, and Fennrys knew that, whatever instinct was driving her, there was a rightness to her actions. He could feel it himself and excitement surged in his chest. Suddenly, he realized that they were following an overgrown path, and Mason's feet pounded along the moss and leaves as if she knew every twisting inch of it blindfolded. In her wake, Fennrys saw the branches of trees along the path suddenly grow heavy with pale purple blossoms, as if caught in a wash of accelerated spring fever. The air grew perfumed and heady, like the
scented breeze in the dream-vision he'd shared with Mason. When the track hair-pinned around a stand of elm, Fennrys lost sight of her and, after a moment, he heard a small, startled cry.

“Mason!” he called and poured on a burst of speed.

He rounded the trees and virtually screeched to a halt as the path suddenly widened into a small clearing ringed by blooming apple trees laden with drifts of lavender flowers and open to the sky above. Mason had stopped short too, and Fennrys almost ran right into her. She stood at the edge of the clearing, which boasted a small, squat structure at its center. Like something out of a fairy tale, it looked like a witch's cottage, windows shuttered from the inside and massively overgrown with ivy now. The roof, Fennrys saw, was made of glass panels in iron frames, like an old greenhouse. The glass was dark with years of grime, and some of the panels had shattered, allowing the ivy to creep inside. It reminded him uncomfortably of some of the decaying buildings on North Brother Island. There were wine-barrel tubs full of dirt and dead weeds on either side of the door, which was painted green, only faded and peeling.

And there was a slide-bar lock on the door.

“Mase,” Fennrys whispered. “Is this . . . ?”

“Where I died,” Mason said. She nodded silently and took a step forward.

Inside, she knew, there would be a wooden bench.

Once upon a time, it had been painted bright blue,
decorated with red roses.

Her mother had painted it that way. Mason didn't know how she knew that; she just did. When Rory had locked her in the shed on that day of the hide-and-seek game, Mason had fallen asleep on that bench. The paint had faded, the blue washed to gray, green leaves pale and dull, but the roses had remained bright. Mason had counted the petals over and over in her loneliness and fear over the next three days. Roses. Her mother's maiden name had been Rose.

And this had been her place.

Mason walked toward the door of the little potting cottage as if she were walking through a dream. She'd never gone back there after they'd found her. Never even thought to. Never dared cross again over the stream that ran before the forest. There was a newer lock on the door—a chain and padlock that Gunnar had obviously put there after the hide-and-seek game—but Mason wondered why her father had never had the old rotting little shack just torn down after that.

Because she's still here
.

Her mom. This had been her place. Her orchard. Her garden shed. Her bench.

And she was still there. In more than just spirit.

Mason drew the knife that Fennrys had given her from her belt and struck off the padlock with a single blow of the hilt. The door swung soundlessly open and a dull red-gold flickering shaft of light spilled out through the gap. Which was strange, because the place was so clearly deserted.

“What the hell . . . ?” Fennrys murmured as he ducked
inside after her.

No . . . Hel
, Mason mentally corrected him. But she couldn't speak.

Inside the shed there was no glass-paneled roof, no wooden shelves or rusting garden tools. The bench was there in the middle of an otherwise empty dirt floor, surrounded by rough-hewn walls of stone. Rust-coated chains ending in manacles hung from iron rings pounded into those walls and the only light, the source of the wavering glow, was a single guttering torch set in a sconce. On one side, the wall wasn't a wall at all, but floor-to-ceiling bars. A prison cell. A cage.

And Fennrys knew it well. Mason knew that, too.

Because, before he could stop himself, his left hand was circling his right wrist in the place where the scars marked him as having been a prisoner here. And suddenly Mason could see him falling back into that place, the darkness and the stench of decay, wondering frantically if it had all been a delusion. Thinking that maybe he'd never left this place at all and was still there, chained to the wall, naked, alone . . .